Simers: Steinberg again seeking to be agent of change

Feb. 5, 2014

Updated Feb. 6, 2014 6:55 a.m.

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"I imploded. The hurt I did to other people was inadvertent. It's real and I own it," agent Leigh Steinberg says. "But I think people should know that when you hit rock bottom, there's still hope." STUART PALLEY, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

"I imploded. The hurt I did to other people was inadvertent. It's real and I own it," agent Leigh Steinberg says. "But I think people should know that when you hit rock bottom, there's still hope." STUART PALLEY, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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I’m sitting with someone I do not know and I have known him for 33 years.

He’s telling me about his first day in an Orange alcohol rehab center four years ago, “waking up on a Sunday,’’ he recalls and being upset, “because I didn’t know where Saturday or Friday had gone.’’

He’s telling me about his son, a bright kid who tagged along with me on a sports assignment years ago, who went two years without talking to his father.

He’s telling me about his car being repossessed, the huge 7-Up container filled with vodka he would embrace while on one of his four-day drinking binges and I’m looking at a picture of Leigh Steinberg and President Obama together on one wall, Julia Roberts and Steinberg on another.

And I thought I knew the guy.

Sure, I knew the always-accessible sports agent who talked like someone who really did spend time in Berkeley honing his smartness.

And I knew the fat Steinberg over the years; the emaciated Steinberg; the guy who talked heady bull like it was his major at Cal; and the guy who had his athletes committed to helping others.

I have read all the Register stories about his bankruptcy, his arrest for DUI, the overall “wreckage’’ as Steinberg calls it and now his comeback.

And he’s still using many of the same pat phrases when we meet Tuesday in his Newport Beach office overlooking Newport Bay.

I’m not sure why I’m here beyond wanting to understand how someone perched on top of the world in his chosen profession could fall so far.

And I guess I want to know why I had no idea. And why he’s trying now to push a book about himself, “The Agent,’’ which says on the cover: “My 40-year career making deals and changing the game,’’ like he’s still on top.

I also want to know why he made news last week with the claim former Chargers general manager Bobby Beathard helped him dupe the Colts into passing on Ryan Leaf in the draft when it just wasn’t true.

“I wish I hadn’t written that; it was a mistake,’’ he admits, and now I’m wondering how much else he has to say isn’t the truth if challenged.

And so I’m pressing him why is there only praise for him on the back of the book’s jacket cover, Warren Moon talking about Steinberg’s “integrity.’’

“It’s what the (publisher) wanted,’’ he says, but doesn’t he have more to offer than another reminder he was the model for Jerry Maguire?

There isn’t a hint about the disease that crippled him, and while he goes into detail inside, what’s the message being sent?

“I’m carrying the memory of those bad things,’’ he says, “But that’s not where I am.’’

Steinberg will be signing his book tonight at 7 at the Barnes & Noble in the Fashion Island Mall, selling it, of course, on the strength of his celebrity.

But he’s 64 now with one client, the son of former client Gale Gilbert, Garrett, who played quarterback for SMU and who is projected as a third-round pick.

Steinberg says he’s still going to make a difference in the world as an agent or whatever. He spent more than $200,000 last week to throw a Super Bowl party, and he says he did 140 radio interviews while in New York.

“People must still be interested in me,’’ he says.

He says those interviewing him want to know his position on concussions and the NFL draft and who is he kidding? He’s still the accident beside the road.

“In the two thousands I lost my father to a long battle with cancer, my two boys were diagnosed with an incurable eye disease, we lost two homes to mold and I divorced,’’ he says, and it’s like he’s reading from a script.

“I couldn’t protect my father. I couldn’t protect my kids, couldn’t keep a home over us and I couldn’t hold our marriage together. I felt powerless like Gulliver on the beach with Lilliputians sticking forks in him.’’

The whole thing has a woe-is-me icky feeling to it, and I’m telling him I can’t understand how someone who had the success, resources and intellect to contend with misfortune crumpled so.

“I understand how jarring it is to think you know somebody and they were this or that only to find out they were someone else,’’ he says. “I’m surprised I’m an alcoholic. But I know now tragedy is a part of life that can be handled without a drink.

“The truth is, after all the wonderful years I had, I went through a stage where things just wore me down so I was wondering what’s next? The locusts?

“I needed something to blot out what was happening in my personal life. Obviously alcohol is a flawed solution for deeper issues in someone, but with alcoholism after awhile the brain links breathing to drinking. It’s like if you don’t drink, you die.’’

He says he has been sober since March 21, 2010, spending nine months in the rehab facility in Orange. He might have checked out earlier, but he wasn’t ready for people to rely on him for fear of letting them down.

He took a daily phone call for the past three years, never knowing when he was going to be asked to take a drug test, never having a problem. He went to an AA meeting Monday night.

“Look, I know something happened in Kobe Bryant’s past and in Times Square now there’s a huge poster of Kobe and Air Turkey. I was in Atlanta when whatever happened to Ray Lewis happened and he probably would be in jail if he hadn’t turned state evidence. And now he’s earning huge endorsement figures.

“I imploded. The hurt I did to other people was inadvertent. It’s real and I own it. But I think people should know that when you hit rock bottom, there’s still hope. And this country is great about giving people another chance, so here I am.’’

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